West Bengal stands 1st in suicides

NEW DELHI: India reported 348 suicides and 418 accidental deaths per day in 2009, data released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) showed.

Suicides rose 1.7% compared to 2008 while accidental deaths, including those in road mishaps, increased by 7.3% over the last year. A total of 1,27,151 suicides and 3,57,021 accidental deaths were reported in 2009.

"A total of 223 males commit suicides per day in the country while the number for women is 125 out of which 69 are housewives. Seventy-three people commit suicide on a single day due to illness while 10 are driven to suicide due to love affairs," the NCRB report said.

West Bengal topped the list with 14,648 suicides followed by Andhra Pradesh (14,500), Tamil Nadu (14,424), Maharashtra (14,300) and Karnataka (12,195). These five states accounted for 55.1% of the total suicides. Delhi recorded 1,477 suicides in 2009. UP rehas a comparatively lower number of suicides -- 3.3% of total cases. The data showed that suicides among farmers had increased during the period with five states - Maharashtra (2,872), AP (2,414), Karnataka (2,282), Chhattisgarh (1,802) and Madhya Pradesh (1,395) - accounting for nearly two-thirds of all farm suicides in the country. A total of 17,368 farmer suicides were reported in 2009, an increase of over 7% over 2008.

Maharashtra remained the worst state for farm suicides for the tenth year running. Tamil Nadu reported the biggest increase, from 512 in 2008 to 1,060 in 2009.

Poor states like Bihar (112), Orissa (154) and Jharkhand (164) reported far fewer suicides. On the reasons for people committing suicides, family problems and illness topped the list with 23.7 and 21% cases respectively.

"It is observed that social and economic causes have led most of the males to commit suicide whereas emotional and personal causes have mainly driven women to end their lives," the report said, adding the number of suicides due to unemployment and professional/career problems showed an increase of 18.8% and 15.1% respectively in 2009.

Among cities, Bangalore (2,167), Chennai (1,412), Delhi (1,215) and Mumbai (1,051) together reported almost 43.3% of the total suicides reported from 35 big cities in the country.

However, in terms of rate of rise in accidental deaths, the highest increase was reported from Pune. As far as accidental deaths are concerned, road accidents accounted for 37.9% followed by poisoning (8%), railway accidents (7.8%), drowning (7.7%) and fire accidents (7%).

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